I think we’ve all had close encounters in the grocery store when it comes to clearance on either side of the cart you have.  Sometimes people simply misjudge how much space they have and they collide with your cart on the side.  Other times call for the Evil Stare if two people are blocking the lane but aren’t currently looking at anything in the aisle directly to either side.  Even worse are the Aisle Shooter-Outers who zoom out of an aisle into the end aisle that are perpendicular with nary a care as to whether people are walking near that area.

The most challenging grocery store to navigate through was back when I lived in Chicago on Broadway and the local Dominick’s store was (is?) a miniature version of a normal store.  Space is at a premium in that neighborhood and this store was no exception.  To accommodate such small aisles, the carts were also miniature-sized.  For those of you used to those uber-carts found at your local Gigantosaur Shopping Club, you could probably fit two of these carts into it.  If you wanted a gallon of milk, a gallon of OJ and a case of beer, you’d have to pick two of three and come back the next time to get the third since there simply wasn’t room in the cart!

Back to my story, Ally and I had entered our local Publix and I was strapping her into the cart near where you get carts inside the store.  This particular cart has a separate seating section which allows two kids to sit separate from the cart itself.  There’s another type of cart in this store that has a “car” in front where two smaller kids can sit in but Ally hasn’t wanted to be in those as of late.

Anyway, picture me next to her on the side of the cart.  My head is focused down where the straps are, as I was adjusting them so it would fit her better.  The next thing I know, “WHAM”, someone had rammed us from behind.  This wasn’t a typical “Oops, I’m not looking” mini-bumping of carts, this was an “I’m going full steam ahead and simply not looking” kind of collision.  I looked up, rather startled, as I’m not used to being in high speed collisions at the grocery store and I see an Asian mom with her two kids inside one of those “car” carts. 

She looked at me and apologized but I really wondered why she was going so fast near the cart area especially with her two kids in the front.  Thankfully I had just strapped Ally in at the time so she wasn’t jostled off the cart but I think one of the kids bumped his head inside his cart.  If your kids were in the front of a cart, wouldn’t you tend to steer a bit more carefully?  What if one of her kids had his hand sticking out the front?  At the speed she collided with me at, she could easily have broken her kids’ fingers.  It wasn’t as though I was in the way of being able to put a cart back to its corral (as I assume she was trying to do since she had already purchased her items), in fact I was definitely off the beaten path. 

Do these things happen to just me or am I not alone?